Our Approach

Our approach

At Storytellers for Change we employ a Story-Centered approach to engage and inspire people, bring communities together, train storytellers, facilitate dialogues about equity and social justice, and harness the power of narrative to address complex social issues. This method involves three essential practices: Story-Listening, Story-Crafting & Story-Telling.

Our approach is the product of over ten years of direct community engagement and consulting work with school districts, foundation, colleges, and organizations.

Coming Soon: The Story-Centered Toolkit.

STORY-CENTERED

The Storytellers for Change Approach

Story-Listening

Understand through Empathy

Story-Listening is fundamentally about inclusion, empathy, and equity. In our trainings, we highlight story-listening is the most important task and skill of a Storyteller for Change. We listen with empathy so we may empower others to share their stories. Students, educators, and organizational leaders employ Story-Listening to practice servant-leadership, build inclusive environments, and advance equity and social justice work in their organization and communities.

In our consulting work, Story-Listening guides our approach to help school districts, organizations, colleges, and foundations to discover unheard stories, generate empathy, build partnerships with community stakeholders, and develop a deeper understanding of the needs and strengths of the communities they want to serve.

Story-Crafting

Create a Narrative for Change

This is the creative and strategic process. At Storytellers for Change we've designed a variety of Story-Crafting frameworks and methods to help individuals and organizations transform empathy and new insights into a narrative for change. This is where we develop a blueprint and prototype for your story, strategy, or program.

In our trainings, we empower and equip people with the tools they need to craft their stories to share with their target audience (students, school, community, organization, etc.). In our consulting work, this is the process of capturing and defining key lessons learned, articulating possible solutions, and charting a pathway forward for a project or program.

Storytelling

Engage to Inspire Action

We listen to understand, we craft narratives to imagine new possibilities, and we share stories to engage and inspire action. In our work, storytelling is not just about sharing a memorable narrative. We share stories with the objective to empower and mobilize the whole person, as well as whole communities and organizations, into action (heart, head, and hands).

In our trainings, this is the practice of sharing our stories with purpose and in a variety of formats to inspire action. In our consulting work, storytelling drives our engagement and co-design process to implement programs and initiatives aimed at tackling social challenges. The process of storytelling also allows us to continue engaging community stakeholders and practicing story-listening.